Posts Tagged ‘Good old games’

When a Flare Path Friday falls on Chinese New Year, it’s traditional for all the stories to be Sino centred. Back in 1997 that meant coverage of Taiwan invasion TBS 以臺海兩岸緊張, thoughts on Ding Ding, a work-in-progress Hong Kong tramway sim, and an interview with Implicit Sextant, the team behind heavenly 14th Century fireworks sandbox, The Fire Drake of Fuzhou. Today it means Silent Service II patrols in the South China Sea, and a swift inspection of Just Trains’ new SS7C CR electric loco. Read the rest of this entry »

…is what someone who works at videogame download service might say. I don’t work at one of those, so I don’t really know why I’m saying it. I suppose I’m generally in favour of the buying of videogames, however. I’m also in favour of videogames being affordable, so the last gasp of mad discounting in the current GoG Summer Sale prompts me to raise a grubby thumb in approval. You’ve around 20 hours left to obtain the likes of The Witcher 2, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, Dungeon Keeper, Retro City Rampage and Syndicate for $cheap.Read the rest of this entry »

Good Old Games is gone. But GOG.com continues on. In light of their starting to take orders for more recent games, the words are gone from their name and only the acronym remains. This comes alongside their new frontpage, the news that they’ll be aiming to add three games a week instead of two, an improved downloader, and the addition of The Whispered World, Trine, and the soon-to-be-added Machinarium, Darwinia and Spacechem. Oh, and they’re taking pre-orders for the Dungeon Master inspired Legend Of Grimrock. So where does this leave their identity?

Everyone has at some point taken a pop at the first G of GOG’s acronym. Megarace? Postal 2? Alone In The Dark 4? Then just when you want to campaign they should just call it “Old Games”, they bring us a Syndicate, a Thief, a Deus Ex. So today’s announcement? Which way will it go? Up or down? Great or hate?

Now that my initial excitement has waned to a deep, purple coloured throb in the centre of my soul, the stark reality of GOG.com‘s Thief port has settled in. It runs, which is the big step up from my original version, but it’s not widescreen, the resolution is stamp sized, and it’s a bit grimy. Fret not, lovely Taffers, for I’m about to tell you how to make it work. And it’s ridiculously simple.Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t believe that writing about a 14 year-old game is getting both me and Adam so excited (He: “This is the best thing ever!”), but Looking Glass’s genre-defining classic Thief is now available to download on Good Old Games. I’m downloading it right now, Taffer.Read the rest of this entry »

Check the Earth for giant cracks, while demons ride high above the clouds, their red wings raining down fire, because the original Bullfrog Syndicate is to be available once again, via the magic of Good Old Games.

Expect plenty more of these kinds of updates leading up to next week’s web-wide SOPA protests: it’s an enormously important issue for the future of the internet and everyone who uses it, so we’re giving it our all.

Also declaring themselves strongly against the online culture-trashing folly today are Minecraft-makers Mojang, who intend to make a right old song and dance about SOPA next week, NVIDIA, Trine chaps Frozenbyte, Torchlight devs Runic and retromancers Good Old Games. Positions, statements and assorted protests below.Read the rest of this entry »

The thing that I posted about last week, with the free copy of Empire Earth Gold and the 50% off most everything in the Good Old Games back catalogue, is happening right now. So if you somehow have any money left after having been repeatedly mugged by indie bundles, here’s where to go. Off you go. Why yes, I am watching as you walk. That’s a nice wiggle you’ve got there, lad.

I remember Empire Earth quite fondly. I think I scored it 80-something percent in one of my earliest PC gamer reviews. Wonder how it holds up today? The game, not the review. The review is almost certainly terrible.

As I believe Jim wryly observed the other day, increasingly blogging about non-mainstream games entails blogging about non-mainstream games’ business strategies. It’s bundles, sales and more bundles as far as the eye can see at the moment, and latest to join the ranks of those appealing to the light-walleted is retromancery central Good Old Games.

Come Thursday, they’re knocking 40% off the price of The Witcher 2 (thus dropping it to £14.99/$23.99) and lobbing in a free copy of the Witcher 1:EE to boot. I believe this is about the best price there’s been for Witcher 2 so far right, at least for digital versions? Then come next Monday (12 Dec), they’re making olden strategy epic Empire Earth Gold Edition free for 48 hours, and slicing 50% off almost all the retro games in their catalogue. So you’ll want to go and lurk like a bargain-crazed pervert on GoG.com round about then. Full details here.

Good Old Games have been adding a bunch of EA games in the last few weeks. But today’s requires a post. They’ve got hold of the complete Ultima VII, widely considered to be the best in the Ultima series. (Argue!) So in there is all the extra bits and bobs, The Black Gate, Forge Of Virtue, Serpent Isle and The Silver Seed. For $6/£3.85. Which is nice.

Good Old Games have certainly built themselves a brand. Over the last few years the Polish project has leapt forward from offering a few provincial classics to a really impressive catalogue of games that made the 90s and early 00s interesting. Clearly they’ve been letting in many more recent games of late, with Fahrenheit appearing last week for example. And they used it to launch their own game, The Witcher 2, earlier this year. But it seems they want to expand even further, going directly into competition with the likes of Steam, Impulse, GamersGate or Origin. Which is always a bold step, but one made much more interesting when you consider their DRM-free requirement.